Historical determination of knowledge is evidence of relevance, not of relativity

Evidence

Horkheimer accused Mannheim of clinging to a diluted variant of classical German Idealism`becoming human’ as the metaphysical reality upon which the sociology of knowledge was supposed to be able to throw some lightand of presenting all historically and socially determined truths as being equally relative, and thus ideological. The determinedness and limitedness of knowledge are precisely what gives it its significance for the improvement of conditions which are determining and limiting: this was the version of a concrete, existentialist position (although he did not call it this) which Horkheimer was to support emphatically in The Beginnings of the Bourgeois Philosophy of History as well. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 200

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes Horkheimer’s critical historicism from Mannheim’s relativist sociology of knowledge — a key theoretical line in the Frankfurt canon.
• DEEPTHINKING: A tight, paradigm-defining thesis: the boundedness of knowledge is precisely its significance, not its defect — resists easy paraphrase.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how this position later evolved into the critique of instrumental reason given it starts by affirming historically-determined interest.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 200
• XREF: connects to: Horkheimer held that knowledge’s historical limits give it practical relevance, not relativity — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 201; Unknown reality is a relative historical condition, not a metaphysical unknowable; Theory is contested conjunctural knowledge, not will to truth (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Horkheimer held that knowledge’s historical limits give it practical relevance, not relativity #corroborates (0.95) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 201
• Historical truth is not validated by success or acceptance #corroborates (0.80) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 784
• Unknown reality is a relative historical condition, not a metaphysical unknowable #qualifies (0.78)
• Theory is contested conjunctural knowledge, not will to truth #expands (0.75)
• The feeling that systematic knowledge is impossible stems from uncontrollable modern events, not epistemology #complicates (0.72) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 19